


Always Be Somewhat Suspect

by scioscribe



Category: Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Genre: Banal Evil, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Sexism, Unreliable Narrator, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-06 17:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Nine months of Guy Woodhouse self-justifications, in reverse.





	Always Be Somewhat Suspect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



> Title from Václav Havel: "I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect."

There. From Rosemary’s point of view, it was all over now. They could get back to normal.

It was nothing, Guy thought, nothing. Lots of women miscarried. Even in this day and age, plenty of births went wrong—the mothers and fathers bummed around a bit afterwards feeling blue, that was normal, but sooner or later they tried again. He would go for it as soon as she wanted, absolutely as soon as she said she was ready, to hell with wherever his career luck was at the moment. He owed that to her.

Roman and the others wouldn’t need anything else from her—well, not once her milk was gone, anyway. God forbid Guy suggest that they try giving Adrian formula instead; Laura-Louise had almost taken his head off.

It was hell, he could admit that now. He’d put her through hell. What was that Shakespeare line? _Hell is empty, and all the devils are here._

All of them witches.

 _Jesus_. Even with all the trouble they’d gone to, Hutch had still come close to spoiling the whole thing—what a goddamn busybody. But he’d always been that way. Rosemary thought it was so sweet that he’d played mentor to her, but Guy knew better: Hutch had just gotten his rocks off teaching the fresh as a daisy Midwestern Catholic schoolgirl how to be a big city agnostic. He was no saint.

But none of that mattered anymore. Guy had given them the baby, like he’d promised, and soon he’d give Ro her baby, like he’d promised, and everybody would be square.

He sat beside Rosemary’s bed and petted her hand. Her skin was getting dry—she’d always been so careful of herself, even when the pain had been at its worst, and this was the first time he’d ever felt roughness when he touched her. He rubbed lotion into her skin. There, he wanted to say, he wasn’t such a bad guy, was he? He cared about her—he was caring _for_ her.

“We’ll get through this, honey,” Guy said. The lotion smelled like tuberoses. And tannis—everything in the apartment, everything in the world, smelled like fucking tannis lately. He couldn’t get it out of his nose.

Rosemary turned her head to the side and looked away from him. She wasn’t even listening.

He tried again. Injected more confidence. “I love you, Ro.” He touched the smooth nape of her neck, right up against that horrible haircut. “Everything’s going to be okay. You’ve just got all these post-birth hormones racing around in you right now and things look bleak, but you’re going to be out of that tunnel any day now.”

She stayed as she was—might as well have been a statue.

Waste of time. And he was running late. But he still made sure to bend over and kiss her cheek before he left. He wanted her to know he wasn’t taking any of this personally.

All she needed, really, was to get out of the city. (To get away from Minnie and Roman, honestly, because she was never going to shake seeing them as the two horsemen of her own little apocalypse.) She’d be so happy once they finally made it to California. All that sunshine, all those stars: she’d have to see then that their future was bright.

*

“Will it be a boy or a girl?”

Minnie snorted—a distinctly horsey expression. “A boy, of course.”

“It’s kicking now,” Guy said. He revised this: “ _He’s_ kicking.” They all asked for these little updates and they hung on every word he said, like eager grandparents—what was Rosemary eating? She hadn’t had any salt, had she? (“Salt’s got associations,” Minnie said ominously. “Salt goes all in the other direction. Salt and mustard both, so you keep her away from them.”) Had her feet started swelling up? How was her mood? He was afraid to make anything up just in case they’d twig to it, but like hell was he going to tell them what Rosemary had said about tossing Minnie’s drink down the drain and swilling sherry instead.

The minute she’d said the pain had stopped, Guy had seen their lives stretch out before them. The baby was dead. She’d killed it—she’d been too damn willful and cocksure, she’d relied on those bitchy friends of hers and some amorphous “mother’s instinct” and she had killed it, she had _fucked_ him. He would lose everything. His luck would turn like that, like a snap of her fingers. He’d be down in the gutter with Baumgart, wearing dark glasses and drinking away his self-pity.

So he stuck with the basics—the happy stuff. Nothing that would get him in any hot water.

“Ooh,” Laura-Louise said. She was holding her hands underneath her chin. She looked grotesque—a woman her age acting like a little girl wanting a doll. “I can’t even wait. Have you felt it?”

“Of course he’s felt it,” Minnie said. “Who would pass that up?”

“And she would have asked, no doubt,” Roman said mildly. “But you say her pain has stopped, Guy?”

“Yes. Very suddenly. The night she had that party.”

“The party we weren’t any of us invited to,” Minnie said. “There you go. He brought her back to us just when she was drifting away, getting hard to manage. All that whining about pain when she’s the chosen vessel.” She shook her head.

“It was starving her,” Guy said sharply. “People were starting to ask questions.” And the tapdancing he’d had to do to manage it—he’d deserve all his success by the time he got it, because Rosemary not catching onto something being up was a goddamned masterpiece of professionalism on his part.

_No, honey, if Dr. Sapirstein says you’ve only lost three pounds, I’m sure it’s three—that scale’s been weighing me light, too. I say we toss it before I start gorging on donuts thinking my waistline’s invincible. No, honey, it’s just your haircut making you look a little off. The pain’s normal, absolutely normal. Maybe not common, but normal—I knew a girl, the stage manager’s wife in one of my first plays, she felt something just like that. No problems with the baby._

“There, there.” Roman patted him on the shoulder like he was an unruly dog. “Your uxorial opinion is noted and respected. You’re absolutely right, it _could_ have caused problems for us if that period had gone on much longer. It’s very pleasant to see her with a smile on her face again. That’s very good.”

“Can you feel the hooves?” Laura-Louise asked. Her eyes were burning in that disconnected fanatic way, like they had their own light source.

Guy repressed his shudder. “Yes.”

“Oh,” she said, her fingers moving like snakes against the underside of her chin. “What a time we live in. I mean that.”

“The Year One,” Roman said.

 _His_ Year One, too. He’d focus on that. He said apologetically, “I have to be out of town for the play soon.”

“Sure you do,” Minnie said. She turned to the others. “We’re all very proud of Guy. We’ll buy out half the theater when the show comes to New York.” Was he imagining the slight edge of contempt in her voice? Probably. Pretty rich for _Minnie Castevet_ to be getting all high-and-mighty on him. “Don’t you worry. We’ll take care of your Rosemary.”

“And Hutch?”

“Pshaw,” said Roman. He pronounced the _p_. “All that’s almost done now. Go out and make your mark, Guy. The world is waiting for you.”

*

In the earliest days of her pregnancy, Rosemary was so chipper and perky that Guy hated to think about how she’d feel later. She really wanted this baby, didn’t she? She was a very traditional girl in a lot of ways. Every time they’d made love before their wedding, there had been a shyness to her; she’d bitten down on his shoulder or covered her mouth so she wouldn’t make anything louder than these little mouse sounds. Like she thought the Pope would overhear her having sex out of wedlock—and with a Protestant, no less. Ye gods.

She’d gotten more uninhibited after they’d gone down the aisle—she wasn’t really a prude, not when she was feeling like herself—but _then_ she’d started in on the babies. He’d had his fingers crossed that maybe it was just something she wanted to check off a list, something she wanted to do to prove to her folks that she hadn’t gone completely heathenish out in the heartless big city. It would have been nice if she’d started having second thoughts now—she’d never have an abortion, so there was no danger there. He’d like it best if she wound up just being quietly grateful to lose the baby when the time came.

But no: Rosemary rattled on and on about how alive she felt. She danced with a light step through the kitchen.

He felt like such a heel. But it was just nine months. That was all he’d ever ask of her—she could lounge around eating bonbons and getting fat afterwards and he wouldn’t say a word about it. It wasn’t like he wasn’t planning to make it up to her.

*

He had a moment where he really thought she was going to refuse to eat the mousse. But in the end, he won her over—Rosemary had that quintessentially Midwestern horror of being thought rude, and he’d played on it with a shamelessness that might have disgusted him if it hadn’t worked. That little thin scrim of chocolate around the inside of her little custard cup was all the post-facto justification he needed. She’d be out like a light.

The worst thing that would happen to her, from her point of view, was that she’d feel a little silly for having gotten herself all worked up for Baby Night just to miss it. She was perfectly safe.

He poured drinks down her nonetheless, just to make sure.

He had the screwiest feeling when he was undressing her. He unbuttoned her top and she woke briefly to ask him what he was doing and his hand almost stole back up to button her again. Her breasts looked beautiful, her nipples a delicate shade of coral that he’d never noticed so vividly before, and she was his _wife_ , wasn’t she? Why the hell was he working off her wedding ring?

“Sleep, Ro.” He kept his hands still. This was how you fucked up your career—you didn’t keep cool when you needed to. This was nothing. Hell, she had it easy—if you looked at it from the right angle. _He_ was the one who’d have to watch his wife getting fucked by—

He was the one who’d have to know what she was carrying. The one who’d have to continue having some role in the kid’s life even after Roman and the others had gotten their hands on it.

“I’m looking out for you too,” he said to her limp, doll-like body. He slid off her pajama pants. Her legs were perfectly toned and, feeling almost superstitious—was this part of the ritual too, one Roman had forgotten to tell him about?—he brushed his fingers across the swell of her cunt through the sheer panties. She made a small, sweet kittenish sound.

“I’m looking out for you,” Guy went on, “and baby, you’re not going to know a thing. Easy-peasy. Just lie back and think of England.”

“You’re taking your sweet time,” Minnie said, suddenly behind him, and she bustled over. She evaluated Rosemary dispassionately. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

“She’s not going to be hurt,” Guy said uncertainly.

“Why on earth would we want to hurt her? She’s about to become the most precious woman in the world.”

“I can’t say that I like the idea of another man—”

“But we aren’t talking about another man,” Roman said. Their bedroom was turning into Grand Central Station. It was good, though: it made the whole thing feel like a play, some sloppily written French farce. They had the sex, they had the scandal, they even had the extra door. “We are not talking about a man at all. We’re talking about the author of all your glory, the opener of your way to fame and fortune. You are not being usurped—you are merely yielding. There’s no shame in that.”

“Any of us would kill to be in your place,” Minnie said. “Yours or hers. Why, if I was younger…” She shook her head. “Well, she’s lucky.”

Guy slipped off his wife’s underwear. Her pubic hair was newly and neatly trimmed, a silky and crinkly blonde-brown.

He put her wedding ring into his pocket and made himself smile. What the hell. The worst night of your life—but then it’s over. And they’d have so much to look forward to.

“Showtime,” he said.

*

Roman made better coffee than Minnie, thank Christ. Guy should have seen that coming: those Vodka Blushes had been the only good part of last night’s dinner, aside from the conversation, and Roman’s hand had been behind those too.

He had warmed the coffee up with a splash of whiskey, too. Top shelf stuff—Guy had seen the bottle.

“But naturally,” Roman was saying, “so much of it is luck. You actors know that, of course. You’re right to talk about breaks as much as you talk about talent. Take _Luther_ —there you were, giving, I have to say, the most natural performance in the production, and yet, yet…” He floated his hand through the air like he was tracing a plume of cigarette smoke. _There blow the winds of fame_ , the gesture seemed to say. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I wonder what role it will be, Guy, that pushes you onto the national stage that you deserve.”

Guy chuckled. “You and me both.”

“Do you have your eye on anything at the moment?”

“Not quite. I just had the prize snatched away, in fact.”

Roman leaned forward. “Oh? What was it?”

Guy laid it all out for him—the shitty play with the plum part, the cosmic indecency of it going to Donald Baumgart, who didn’t have craft commitment enough to change his name—and kept it light. But Roman wasn’t the kind to give him cheerful pabulum about it. God, Guy thought, but it was nice to talk to someone who actually _knew_ something about the business and could give him something more than a pat on the head. Rosemary was sweet, sure, but in a wifey, consoling, Susie Homemaker way, so pleasantly sure of him and so safely ignorant about the world. Well, you married for leisure, didn’t you? Work was something you did on your own.

“You know,” Roman said thoughtfully, “it isn’t always too late just because a decision’s been made. I asked you if you understudied for Luther—if something had kept Finney off-stage for a night, who knows what that would have done for you?”

“Except I wasn’t Finney’s understudy.”

“No, but in a way, you could be considered Baumgart’s. –I agree with you, by the way, there’s a lack of seriousness to that name.”

“Well,” Guy said, “Baumgart’s welcome to drop out as far as I’m concerned.”

“No, but they never do, do they? Well, we shall see, we shall see…” He put his teeth, very straight and white for an older man’s, against his lower lip. “My father used to practice certain… I suppose you’d call them rituals. Perhaps even superstitions. But of course those aren’t uncommon in our world—we all know actors with lucky audition shirts, playwrights who will only use a certain typewriter.”

Guy agreed. Bunkum, in his unspoken opinion, but all the same, it was there. People did crazy things. They always had. He’d be up for doing some pretty crazy things himself, frankly.

“I wonder if you’d humor me,” Roman said. “In something rather in my father’s line.”

Guy smiled in a noncommittal kind of way.

“I believe—I would almost go so far as to say I _know_ —that if you were to bring me some possession of your rival’s, I could ensure that an understudy would, in fact, be needed.”

“If we’re going to go that far,” Guy said, continuing to smile, “I could just point him out to you and you could run him over.”

“Ah, but I don’t have a car,” Roman said, like the suggestion had been a real one. Then he laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. Nothing so overt. Just the combined will of a few friends and a few… rituals that my father rather perfected.”

“Why not?” Guy said amiably. “If you want to do some mumbo-jumbo for me, who am I to argue?”

“We’d need something in return, of course.”

That was when Guy felt a dry prickle of unease, like fingers twitching suddenly against the back of his neck. The old geezer really meant it—an intelligent, reasonable, well-traveled, well-connected man. Maybe they’d both taken one too many drinks. He had the funniest urge to just get up and go, but that would be insane.

Guy shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “This is America.”

“Yes, very true. If you want to play, you have to pay.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing so very dreadful. Though your wife, I’m afraid, would find it very anti-religious.” He spread his hands out, looking apologetic. “I know she told us she’s not really Catholic any longer, but you know what they say—give them to me when they’re young, and they’ll be mine forever.”

“It does stick,” Guy said.

“But you don’t have any of those sentiments.”

“No incense, no baptisms. Scout’s honor.”

“What I’m going to say might sound a little extreme, but please keep in mind that obviously _your_ end of the bargain wouldn’t have to be upheld until _my_ end was already accomplished. I shouldn’t expect you to do something for nothing, and the burden of proof, obviously, is all on my side. But in effect, Guy, I would like your wife’s participation in a certain ritual. Obviously she wouldn’t be amenable to this, she still has too much of that Catholic starch to her. Honestly, things could be managed so that she would sleep through the entire thing. She wouldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t be hurt at all. Goodness, no. Her safety would be very precious, in fact.”

This was nuts. “What kind of ritual?”

Roman looked almost sheepish. “You might say ‘fertility,’ I suppose.”

He couldn’t hold in the laugh. “God, Roman.”

“No,” Roman said. “Not that at all.”

“You want to, what, have some kind of orgy with my wife while she’s asleep? And you expect me to sign off on it?”

“It sounds ludicrous. I fully appreciate that. But think about it this way, Guy—if it could get you what you want, what you _deserve_ , well, that’s what Rosemary wants too, isn’t it? What _she_ deserves? In a way you’d be making the decision that’s best for her as well. It’s a husband’s duty to provide. I’m sure she’s made sacrifices for your career—I’m sure she’d make any you asked, cheerfully, if it weren’t, of course, for that niggling little sense of antiquated morality. And it _is_ antiquated, you know that. Where’s the harm, really, in a broken convention or two?”

It was true that they’d been at a party once where a producer had been coming on hot and heavy to Rosemary and she had smiled politely at him, pretty and faux-virginal as a milkmaid, and kept moving away from that pawing hand. Later, uncharacteristically upset, she’d asked him if he hadn’t seen how that man had been talking to her, _touching_ her. Guy had played it off—no, baby, no, of course not, why I oughta—but the whole time, he’d been thinking, _God, Ro, would it have killed you to let him get a handful of tit? He could have made me a star._

So Roman had a point. There was a nasty, gratifying relief to agreeing with that—to saying that Rosemary’s good-wife qualities stopped sadly short of the full cooperation he sometimes wanted but, poor girl, that was just because of her upbringing. Her _intentions_ were good. She loved him, nobody could have any doubt about that, and he loved her, obviously, they were very happy together.

But he could make decisions without her. Hell, she made them on occasion without _him_ , didn’t she, or they wouldn’t have had that dinner with Minnie and Roman in the first place? He hadn’t even wanted to go.

And it wasn’t going to matter. This was all bullshit. Sure it was.

He took another long swallow of his Irish coffee.

“When you put it that way,” he said. “Why not?”  



End file.
